Dominique Ansel Bakery · Since May 2013

The Cronut

Name: The Cronut
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: New York
Ingredients: 500 g flour; 10 g salt; 60 g sugar; 15 g fresh yeast; 250 ml milk; 250 g butter for laminating; Oil for frying; Vanilla sugar, 300 ml crème pâtissière, 100 g icing sugar with a spoon of milk for the glaze

A laminated croissant dough proofed, fried like a doughnut, rolled in flavoured sugar, filled with cream and glazed: Dominique Ansel’s Cronut appeared in SoHo in May 2013, was trademarked within weeks and is still made in one flavour a month.

Taste profile

Sweet8

Rich8

Fresh1

Crunch6

Bitter0

Pair it with

A filter coffee, at eight in the morning, on the pavement.

Dominique Ansel

Ansel developed the Cronut over two months in the kitchen of his Spring Street bakery and put it on the counter on 10 May 2013. A food blog wrote about it that afternoon; the next morning there was a queue of a hundred, and there has been one ever since. The name was trademarked, the flavour changes monthly and is never repeated, two per person on weekdays, a pre-order opens online two weeks ahead.

The Cronut is the pastry that taught the world that a bakery could be news. Ansel’s own favourite at the same counter is the DKA, his kouign-amann, and he is right.

The home version · serves 6

Ingredients

500 g flour
10 g salt
60 g sugar
15 g fresh yeast
250 ml milk
250 g butter for laminating
Oil for frying
Vanilla sugar, 300 ml crème pâtissière, 100 g icing sugar with a spoon of milk for the glaze

Method

Make a croissant dough: mix flour, salt, sugar, yeast and milk, rest, then laminate with the butter in three letter folds with rests in between.
Roll 2 cm thick, cut rings with a doughnut cutter, proof two hours until puffed.
Fry at 175 °C for 90 seconds each side until deep gold; drain.
Roll in vanilla sugar while warm; pipe crème pâtissière into the layers from the side.
Glaze the top and eat within six hours; the Cronut does not keep.